Archive for the Fashion Category

Somebody asked recently if I had “given up” writing this blog. No, not really. I took a little break from it, but I was always planning to return in the time of my country’s greatest need. I’m like the King Arthur of sophomoric dick jokes. But it’s not always easy to find new things to say about drunken acts of physical love. I’ve been wondering if maybe I should expand my range a little, by commenting on Recent Developments in Feminism. I have a lot of opinions. Here, I’ll give it a shot. Here are some Recent Developments in Feminism that happened while I was away.

1. Fling candy bar. The feminist blogosphere reported on this sparkly, low-calorie candy bar with pink packaging, being marketed with the tag line “pleasure yourself.” People are mad because it’s being sold as the candy bar for women, and the whole thing is so sexist. Hey, wait a minute, though! Isn’t all candy for women? Am I right, ladies? (Because we love chocolate.) The real challenge would be to keep women away from it! You’d have to go to extreme lengths. The advertising slogan would have to be something like “The candy bar that rapes your mouth with flavor!”.

My own suggestion, if marketers want to create a candy bar that women won’t buy, is to put a picture of a spider on the packaging. “Spider candy bar: There’s a spider in the bathtub!” It would be a marketing disaster.

The anti-Fling.

2. The pull-out method. Science has discovered that the withdrawal method of birth control is more effective than it was previously though to be. That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Finally, some good news! I was all, “when are they going to release a scientific study about something I like?”

3.Happiness gap. On a less cheerful note, scientists (different ones) discovered by reviewing data that today’s women report being less happy than women did 40 years ago. Somebody named Douthat in the New York Times (who didn’t actually read the article) blames this development on the women’s movement. But then he tries to pretend he’s all feminist by making the following suggestion: “There’s no necessary reason why feminists and cultural conservatives can’t join forces — in the same way that they made common cause during the pornography wars of the 1980s—” by stigmatizing men who act “sexually irresponsible.” Noooo! Don’t fall for it, ladies; it’s a trap! The very worst thing we could do right now is start shaming male sluts for their promiscuous behavior! It’s May! It’s getting all steamy and torrid out! We need more male sluts around, not fewer! The more, the better, because who else is gonna do the job? Instead of being so judgmental, the Times should be encouraging men to explore their sexuality.

“Maureen” probably agrees with me. She’s a single mother of two who suffers from a little problem: “Their dad has every excuse in the world to cancel taking them every other Saturday night like he’s supposed to. So…because I’m a conscientious mom (and a broke one that can’t afford an overnight babysitter), I don’t bring guys home. So I don’t get laid nearly as often as I should.” That’s terrible. Not to be discouraged, Maureen went looking for companionship on Plentyoffish, a dating website whose name is intended to convey the idea “many fish in the sea,” yet which appears, whenever I look at it, to say “Plenty Offish,” and thus to hold out the possibility of meeting people who are “plenty” standoffish or unapproachable. Anyhow, it worked well for her. She soon met “Jude,” a “totally hot” man about her age who said he was looking for friends. She lives in Boston, he lives in Rhode Island.

Jude’s profile included “a quote I really liked, something like ‘it’s not who you have known the longest; it’s about who has stayed and never left.’ I think that was what led me to send him an email, saying I liked his quotes and he had a nice profile. When talking to him on the phone I found him really straightforward, funny and smart. He’s studying for the CPA exam, working as a recruiter… seems to have his life on track pretty much.” They remained phone friends for a couple of weeks.

She adds that he seemed “like a great guy that fools around a bit on the side.” Hey, wait a minute! What “side”? The “side” of what? Well, during their time on the phone, he had “told me all about his live-in girlfriend and their 4 month old, and how the one time they fought recently she wouldn’t let him see his daughter. So… he’s sticking it out for a while and partying on the side.” How scandalous! But there’s no harm in being friends. So she agreed to go hang out with him some night when the kids weren’t around.

The day finally came when she had a Saturday night free. Brutus had friends coming in from Connecticut, and they all agreed to meet at the Rattlesnake Bar in Boston. “Not having been out in a while and feeling a little awkward on my first night out in a while, I opted for a short, black miniskirt from H&M, four-inch heels (kinda funky looking with 2 small buckles on the front), a silk black camisole (Kenneth Cole) and black cardigan with 3/4 sleeves (I think it was from Anne Taylor).”

Black silk camisole

Ann Taylor cardigan

Black stiletto #1

Black stiletto #2

Just for the heck of it, stiletto boot

“Practiced my smoky eye look so I wouldn’t look like a raccoon and I was good to go. So. I get there and Jude is late… texts me and tells me one of his friends is already there. Turns out he’s sitting next to me at the bar. We chat, he’s cool but zero attraction factor. Jude soon arrives with some friends, and others arrive right behind him. It is me and six men: a white guy from Cypress, the white guy from the bar (from somewhere in New England but I don’t remember where), two black guys from the Caribbean, two black American guys… and me, the pasty Irish chick. But I was lookin’ kinda cute.”

Jude “was taller than I expected, dressed really well, was really outgoing and had cool-looking dreads that went halfway down his back (very well kept and pulled back).” But sparks didn’t really fly: “It’s funny but when I met him I was already three deep in terms of White Russians and the thought crossed my mind that he was hotter than I thought he would be but I was kind of distracted by being surrounded by all these young men, none of whom I actually ‘knew.'”

Specifically, her attention had been engaged by one of his friends, “T.”, whom she thought was “fine as hell.” This was “a black American guy from CT, 6’3 with 4 inch braids of some sort. Very sexy eyes. Wearing jeans, Timberlands, t-shirt and jean jacket with some kind of design on the back. And a baseball hat.” She ended up chatting with him, because Jude was a few seats away, and was busy playing host to his old college friends. The whole gang had settled in at a table over drinks and appetizers. T. revealed that he is a “music producer,” and she “showed great restraint in my inebriated state by not rolling my eyes.”

It wasn’t clear if T. returned her interest, because he was too busy checking out the other women in the room. He “made a point of getting a good look at the ass of one as she sauntered by on her way to the ladies room,” and “even left the table at one point to speak to two women at another table, so “the fact that he is obviously a player was hard to ignore.” He excused this by opining “that men are animals and as such can’t be held totally responsible for this type of behavior. I replied that a lot of men claim to be animals but have no follow-through when it’s time to prove it.” Well played, madam, well played.

They decided to leave the Rattlesnake and go to the Whiskey Bar. The guys were all drunk and she had to carry one of them up the hill. Recollections start to grow indistinct at this point, but they had some more drinks, and then “everyone decides to go to a diner in Somerville. One guy’s car got towed so they all piled into an SUV, and I followed with the cute guy.” Hey, wait a minute! Should you be driving? Technically, there could be some traces of alcohol left in your system from the three White Russians, two Southern Comfort and cokes, and then two more more White Russian you just finished drinking five minutes ago! I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but experts say that drinking alcoholic beverages can impair your judgment and reflexes! Sure enough, it did, “which is how, later on, I managed to drive right over a curb in Somerville, scaring my sleeping passenger half to death.”

T. had fallen into a drunken stupor. It was 3 a.m. They drove “what seems like endlessly.” When they got to the diner, it was closed. They decided to head to Greg’s place (one of the guys, whom Maureen describes as “short”). “Everyone has something to eat and conveniently all of the guys except the cutie go to one bedroom that has a bed and couch (and floor) and me and (yes, as you can probably tell by now I am not sure of his name…T? for Trey maybe?) cutie in another room on a futon.”

“Where we cuddled up and got naked fast (it was, after all, nearly 5 a.m. by now). He goes in the other room to get a condom from a friend (none turned up in his quick search of the bedroom we were in) and he gets some kind of generic condom that was apparently so old as to be nearly useless.” They went at it for a while, “but condom difficulties (and drunken exhaustion) had us taking a break. We both fell asleep.” It was morning two hours later, so they got up and exchanged numbers.

T. said he’d call her next time he was in Boston, and we all know what that means. “Whatever, that’s fine. I later asked Jude (casually, of course) how old T. was… he said around 24. Wow. I’m 36… glad I didn’t ask him that night when the thought crossed my mind. I just became an accidental cougar. But at least I got laid.”

We haven’t heard a loss-of-virginity story since that insane asylum one (it wasn’t actually an insane asylum, it was an adolescent psychiatric treatment center). But people often need to wait until they’re older than 13 to lose their virginity. One case is “Tonia,” who was 25 last year, and decided to get serious about getting deflowered “so that I could romp on the sexual playground like all my friends have been doing for quite some time.” She lives in Nashville. And in yet another casualty of the global economic collapse, the local boutique where she bought her lucky outfit(s) is going out of business. She wrote in to bewail this catastrophe: “I am not exaggerating when I say that every piece of clothing that has gotten me laid was purchased at Flaunt.” In her estimation, “I was verging on old maid — which is why these clothes are even more powerful than one might think!”

Let’s back up a bit, though. Tonia had decided that her best strategy was to make her quest casual and fun, so “I set out… with the intention of finding some guy who would be a good candidate. I’d let this weird ‘virginity’ thing get in the way of stuff before and it seemed like hoping for some guy I was in love with was just silly.” She chatted up some guys and went on some dates, hoping to get lucky. “There were several abortive attempts.” Hmm. For once I’m truly flummoxed. I’ve been looking at that sentence for several minutes, trying to think of a tasteless joke about abortions that could be made, and I can’t come up with anything. The attempts to have sex didn’t succeed, you see, so she didn’t have to have any abortions. It’s a clever play upon words! Or it would be, if I were able to write one. I hope my God-given talent for crass sexual humor isn’t in decline. Anyhow, none of these dates resulted a spermatozoon meeting an ovum, which then became a fertilized egg implanted in her uterine lining; she didn’t even get finger-banged. “One guy took me to the opera but didn’t even try to kiss me (and I thought I was looking fine in a cute white-and-red lawn dress); one guy made out with me for two hours but wouldn’t try anything below the waist.” That’s weird. “Totally counter to my own second-and-or-third-date policy, we dated for like a month and a half before the whole high-school-makeout-session occurred. I was entirely disappointed.”

Finally, her luck changed. “I met him at a country bar down on Broadway.” I’ll call him “Hunt.” “A friend of mine was playing there with his band and it actually was me who started the conversation because I overheard him talking about his job, which is similar to what I do, and I started talking to him about it… not that you can really talk about stuff when there’s a band playing 20 feet from where you stand. But I gave him my business card under the guise of ‘hey, I might need your services if you have time to freelance’… and then we got lunch a few days later (date one), and it was obvious that I wasn’t exactly focused on his professional service.”

Next, they arranged a nighttime date. “I’d just discovered Flaunt in Edgehill Village in Nashville. And I went in there on my lunch break to buy something for my date that evening — it was a sunny day and I was feeling particularly reckless.”

“It was getting warmer outside (a situation that does not help matters when it comes to me getting laid, because the combination of heat and nerves results in me ‘glowing’ a little too much), so when i found the Kiyonna pink, sleeveless v-neck top (pleated under the bust and very forgiving of my not-so-six-packed stomach), and paired it with the Silver jeans in Flaunt’s dressing room, I knew I had a winner! I think it’s because that top draws so much attention to my boobs that it distracts from other, not-so-perfect areas… and the Silver Jeans… well, I’ve never found jeans that fit my booty so well and stay that way.”

Kiyonna top

This top doesn’t seem to be for sale, but you might want to go to their website anyway; the woman who models their clothes is a babe! Whoa!

Silver jeans

“Ready for my date that evening in my stunning it’s-getting-warmer-outside ensemble, I met the guy for dinner at a little sushi restaurant. The meal was spent showing off my chopstick skillz as well as — he would be the first to admit — my quite noticeable cleavage (which was thanks in part to the Victoria’s Secret BioFit bra in ‘rose’).”

VS Biofit bra

Things were going well. “After several California rolls, neither of us wanted to end the evening, so we decided to convene at my place after a couple errands — I rented a movie and he picked up a six-pack.” Her movie choice was Beowulf. “I thought it would be hot! Angelina Jolie is on my short list, so I thought, hey, Angelina, that’ll work. Well, it was a disaster. We made fun of the movie the whole time (I didn’t realize it was some kind of weird anime crap) and instead concentrated on rubbing up against each other on my loveseat.” Sounds promising, “but we watched that whole movie without even getting to first base. I was pretty disappointed, because the chemistry was most definitely there, so I suggested we put in one of my TV-on-DVDs.” Even then, her chastity remained safe; she put in This American Life, “which we also watched all. the. way. through!”

Okay, readers, let’s pause the action here. I want to take a few minutes to talk about an issue that’s widespread, one that plagues many individuals in every echelon of society, but yet one that the so-called “mainstream media” refuses to address. I’ll call this problem Guys Who Won’t Make the First Move. Specifically, these are men who won’t make the move in a sexual context, in situations that seem to call for it (as in this example). For guys, there are many ways to initiate the chain of events that could lead to sex acts being performed; you could be like “Oh look, here’s a bed, let’s lie down on it for a moment and collect our thoughts,” or just turn to the young lady sitting next to you and start making out with her. You could playfully slap her ass; you could put an Al Green record on the turntable and say “girl, I am gonna eat your pussy all night long.” I don’t care what you do! But the Guys Who Won’t Make the First Move won’t try any of it. This is perplexing to the woman involved. The media would have us believe that men do nothing but make lewd advances, whether or not they are desired; but in examples like Tonia’s story, this guy seems attracted to you, you’ve invited him into your home, it’s the small hours of the morning, possibly alcohol has been consumed, and yet he does nothing. What’s he waiting for? What I am supposed to do, shove some poontang in his face?

Once again, I apologize for setting up this problem in such a heteronormative way. I only have personal experience with penis-and-vagina scenarios, so I don’t know what is to be done about Gay Guys Who Won’t Make the First Move; for that matter, I don’t know anything about queer women or transgendered people who won’t make the first move. But even within this narrow context, some of you may be asking the following question: “Why is it the man’s job to make the first move? If the woman is interested, shouldn’t she be liberated enough to pursue her desires? Shouldn’t men and women share the burden of risking rejection?” I say no. I say that, all other things being equal, it’s the man’s job, for the following reasons:

(1) Being seduced makes the woman feel sexy and desirable

(2) She already acted kind of forward by inviting you over to her house; the ball’s in your court, dude

(3) It’s less confusing when there’s a protocol

(4) Because, ummmmmm… it just is. I dunno why. It’s a manly skill, like changing the oil in a car, or pounding a nail into a board or something.

I asked Tonia about this, and she agreed with me: “Seriously, about the non-aggressive boys. W.T.F. I guess it’s not ‘respectful’ according to all the women’s studies stuff that stuck in their brains in college?” Oh, no. I never even thought of that. Is that what they teach in those classes? I never took a WOST course, because I didn’t need one; I learned my Women’s Studies on the street! I have feminism street smarts. Also, I was scared to take one, because I heard that people cry during class discussions. Men, is this true? Is Women’s Studies instructing you to be passive? Because these days, it’s like we ladies have to do everything! Shaving, waxing, foot-pumicing, blow-drying, planning a whole outfit, planning the date, paying for half the date, driving to the date, and now you expect us to, like, throw you down on the bed and make love to you? You take some fucking initiative for once!

As it turns out, Hunt finally did take the initiative. “By that time my new jeans were practically on FIRE, but since it was 3 a.m. and my bra was still on, I figured it wasn’t going to happen that night. So, I walked him to my front door.”

“And it all fell apart. He leaned down to kiss me, I leaned in to him, and in a mess of furious making out, rubbing and moaning, I led him back to the couch where my top and his belt came off.” Something about the proximity of doorways seems to make men more assertive. It’s like, you’re standing next to a door, and suddenly there’s boners all over the place. “He then suggested we move it to my bedroom, so we moved down the hallway, still kissing quite heavily, and made it to my bed, where I pushed him down on the mattress. It was at that point that I realized that, if my sex life were to continue in this manner, I would need to get a sturdier, less creaky bed frame.”

“My jeans and his (Ralph Lauren) lay tangled on the floor and an hour or so later we lay tangled in my sheets… I, thoroughly deflowered, and he, rather sweaty, were both quite happily trying to catch our breath.” Hunt left at 4:30. He didn’t know she was a virgin because “because we had gotten each other so damn wound up during the hours of not messing around on the couch that all I could think was DO IT NOW. I decided that my gut was telling me that he was a good guy. And my nether regions were telling me he was SUPER FREAKIN HOT.” When she told him later, he was cool about it.

“We dated for several more months and are still on friendly terms — I’m convinced that the whole thing was due to the clothes… and I am completely distraught at the idea of having no where to shop now that Flaunt is closing.” But this is otherwise a success story: “I’m happy that I did it the way that I did.”

Pickup artists: What do we think of them? All the other feminists seem to be mad at ’em; for example, here’s this Jezebel post, complaining about Neil Strauss, author of The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society etc. etc., for being “a man who made himself famous writing about the way to get a woman into bed.” She’s right, that’s not fair! I’m always writing about the way to get people into bed, but I don’t seem to be getting famous at all! That injustice aside, though, it doesn’t really bother me when guys try to get women into bed, because if they didn’t, the human race would, like, go extinct and stuff. Also, they (PUAs) tend to be vilified for inventing ridiculous slang, and instructing men to start conversations by asking “do you floss before or after you brush?” But I don’t care! I’m sick and tired of toiling in obscurity! Neil Strauss, if you’re reading this, I am available to apply my sartorial acumen to any of your various multi-million-dollar projects. Hit up my e-mail.

Our heroine, Lucy, made some cash in this line of work; in fact, that’s how our story begins. A young NYC resident, she answered a Craigslist ad that basically “was just like ‘talk for 15 minutes on camera! Make $50!” So I did it.” It turned out to be not quite as sketchy as it sounds. The videos were for a subscriber-only website that featured clips of “guys talking to cute girls,” for instructional purposes, so that other guys could learn by example. She played the role of “cute girl” in a couple of clips, and ended up becoming friends with “Erik,” who worked for the website’s company.

She didn’t want to be anything more than friends, though. “He’s good looking, but not really my type (to be honest). Too blond.” Did he try to wear down her resistance? Did he “build attraction” by “demonstrating higher value,” as a master pickup artist would do? Lucy claims he does not use those skills on her, because “I’ve known him for a while and I see through it all!!!” But he must have been doing something right, because it turns out that they had a “friend hookup” once this past summer. How did he make it happen? “I forgot, there’s one pickup trick that he kind of used on me that works every time, even when I know what’s going on. I don’t know if every PUA does this, but the guys I know will do it. If the girl seems a little resistant or shy or whatever, they’ll be like ‘why don’t you come over and we’ll just cuddle?’, you know? ‘Let’s cuddle’ is practically code to me now.” It works better than the direct approach, she says, because “If he had said ‘hey why don’t you stay so we can DO IT,’ I probably would have been like …. ‘oh, it’s 4 a.m.? Not that late, I can brave an hour train ride.'” Hmm, I guess she’s right. “Why don’t you stay so we can DO IT” has a certain Beavis and Butthead charm, but it never seemed to work when those guys used it.

Master pickup artists? Huh huh, you said "master."

One night a couple of weeks ago, she had some pickup plans of her own. “I went out with the plan to seduce a particular guy. He’s a friend of a friend and we met at a party a few weeks ago, then hung out again more recently in a more intimate setting.” (She and “Blake” had been hanging out with her other guy friend and that dude’s love interest.) “So we had been G-chatting a lot and we planned to meet up on Saturday night, and since I met him through that mutual guy friend, I assumed he would be there too. But he wasn’t, so I ended up hanging out with this new guy.”

She had planned her outfit carefully. “I wore this purple tank top from Mango that’s a wool jersey and very low cut in a V and pleated, so the bottom is loose but the fabric is drapey so it’s really flattering. I’ve gotten laid at least twice in this shirt, and I think it’s because it’s so low.” Its effect must be subtle, though, because “People compliment me on so many things when I wear it! My jacket, my necklace, my haircut, the shirt itself. Or they ask if I’ve lost weight or something.”

Ella Moss tank

Velvet tank

(Why’s that picture so small? You get the idea though; another tank top here.)

“I also wore a white Club Monaco blazer, black skinny jeans rolled up a little, and these beautiful Charles Nolan kitten-heel blue suede pumps with a perfectly shaped almond toe and the best cut on top showing just the right amount of toe cleavage. And I hate saying toe cleavage.” I couldn’t find these damn shoes, but I did the best I could.

Paige black jeans

Blue suede peep-toe pumps

Jessica Simpson blue suede pumps

They had a typical bar-hopping night, “went to other venues, he left and came back, etc.” Along the way, they met up with some other people, including her friends Erik and the other dudes from the PUA business, and they all joined forces. It was a fun night, “but [Blake] had just twisted his ankle and wasn’t allowed to drink because of his pain pills, so he was totally stone-cold sober while I got more and more housed. Then around 2 he said he was tired and going home and he’d walk me to my subway station (different from his station) but I was pretty fuzzy at that point, and I was thinking you know… if nothing’s going to happen, then I kind of want to stay here with my friends. So I said I’d stay and he left, and I went over to join my friends at the table where they were sitting.”

The whole gang sat and drank for a while, and then decided they would go to Erik’s house and play beer blackjack. “But since it was past 3, we couldn’t buy beer, and instead we went for wraps across the street.” Then they went to his place “and ate and drank whatever was in the fridge and then it was about 5, and everyone started going home.” Erik “told one guy he could sleep on the couch (he lived on that couch for a month when he first moved to town) and told me that I was welcome to stay if I wanted (which I’ve done before, platonically).”

“So when I stay there, I stay with him in the bed, and so he gave me some pajamas and we got in bed and we always talk for awhile before sleeping, especially when we’re so drunk and he’s so high, but instead of staying on our sides this time, he had kind of trapped one of my legs between his. We were kind of getting closer and closer while talking, and then he was teasing me about something, and then he was tickling me and I was kind of screaming and laughing, and then he was kissing me really aggressively, and I was surprised, but drunk and so I went with it.”

“It was very drunk sex though, I had to stop and get water before going down on him, and then I had to stop again for more water after we started doing it, then again, then finally we both had to get water and when we came back we kind of just fell on the bed and went to sleep. There was some talk earlier of him not wanting to come yet and holding back, but I don’t think he did, in the end.” Isn’t that always the way? Why do drunk guys always think they’re about to come, and then they never do? “I searched for evidence and there was none.” The jizz detective!

The disappointing failure of this investigation, though, paled in comparison to the next day’s tragic coda. “In the morning, I was completely hung over and I got up and watched cartoons with [Erik] on the couch. Then we all went for brunch and I had a great burger and fries, and I only ate half so I could eat the second half for dinner, but then I went to a sample sale and had to check my bag at the front and forgot it! I didn’t realize it till I got home (like 45 minutes away) and I was THIS close to going back for it. It was so awesome, it had blue cheese and portobello mushrooms.” No word yet on what happened with Blake.

If you live in the eastern half of the United States, it’s possible that you, like me, are too sick to think about sex. Perhaps you clicked this bookmark out of sheer habit, from the deep recesses of a germy sickbed, and didn’t really want to be titillated. For you, I’ll begin with a couple of generalized bitches (“observations”) about life.

(1) Legislators all over America are mulling plans to regulate and tax marijuana. Just great. They finally get around to legalizing recreational drugs, and they start with the one that makes me all paranoid and antisocial. Why can’t the government ever regulate and tax a drug that I like? They could do mushrooms/peyote, which are just as healthy but give you fun hallucinations, or opium, which has that cool smell. The last time I got high on marijuana, all that happened was I became so fascinated by the movie Scrooged!, I barely noticed when all my friends went home to bed. I’m going to start a new political organization, called The Legalize Cocaine, Ecstasy and Adderall Abuse Party.

(2) Seriously, what is the effin’ deal with this illness? For those who have not experienced it up close, it’s a cold/flu with a dramatic cough. If you can imagine the domestic chaos that would ensue if the head of a family of ducks came home to find his wife making love with another duck, the resulting hellish cacophony is what it sounds like when I have to cough, every 12 seconds. It’s March! I was supposed to be rolling around nude in a verdant field! This was not the plan at all!

But enough of that; our story takes place way, way, way back, near the middle of our Winter of Discontent, on New Year’s Eve. “Chloe,” a recent college graduate, was going out to a big party with “Brad”; they’re friends, and she had agreed to act as a his wingwoman. Brad had been casually dating a young lady, and hoped this would be the night to seduce her. She would be attending the same party, and the idea was that “when she showed up, he was going to gracefully ditch me.”

Chloe was wearing a Betsey Johson dress, empire waisted, with turquoise stripes, black stockings with seams up the back (for “old-fashioned whorishness”), and black stilettos by Mossimo for Target.

(Picture of the dress coming soon!)

Back-seam stockings

Mossimo pumps

Brad came over before the party, and “we get kinda coked up.” They had bought some coke a couple of weeks before, in anticipation. They went the party, where everything went as expected. Brad’s lady friend showed up, and “they were pairing up as the night went on.”

A little while before midnight, he was like “Can I leave with her?” and Chloe was like “Dude, that was the plan.” He was wearing cowboy boots, jeans and a sable corduroy jacket. Chloe says he has “rugged good looks,” and would have gotten laid anyway.

Corduroy jacket

Cowboy boots

She decided it was time to leave the party and head to a certain bar (“The Liquor Box”) where some of her friends were. She hurried over there, arrived “literally three minutes” before the countdown to midnight, and proceeded to get “shitty drunk on free champagne.”

She was with her friends, feeling comfortable and happy. But “there’s this guy.” He was across the bar from her. “I’m making eyes at him, he’s making eyes at me.” A pale blondie, she loves “swarthy men,” and he was tall, dark and handsome (it turned out that he’s Iranian). She said to herself, “I want that dude.” Knowing what to say was not a problem because, according to her, “I’m not shy.” She introduced herself, and had a conversation in which she asked the following four questions:

— What’s your name? (“Alan”)
— What do you do? (He’s a business school student)
— Where do you live? (In town, near her)
— Do you want to go home with me? (Yes)

All the stars were aligned: “I wanted to have sex, he was there, he was hot.” Alan drove her to her house, unnerving her in the process by having the “cleanest car ever.” In the living room, they “pretended to have a conversation,” in interest of feigning decorum. But it didn’t last too long. After that, there was “lots of fuckin’,” with her on top because she “wanted to look at his perfect caramel skin.” She adds that “the sex was good, nothin’ to call your mama about.” Those were here exact words, but I think your mama does not want to hear about how you were ravished by a huge Arab, even (especially?) if it was mind-blowing. They fell into a deep sleep.

In the morning, she and Alan woke up around 10 and he drove her back to her car. She was “hung over as balls,” with a mouth tasting of “ashtray and cock,” and went back to bed immediately. When she woke up again around 5, she discovered he had left a Burberry Scarf and Kenneth Cole watch behind in his “mad dash to get out of my vagina.”

The tan one is ugly.

She considered selling these items on Craigslist, but her conscience got the better of her, and she managed to track him down on Facebook (they hadn’t traded contact information, or even last names). He came and got his accessories a few days later. Since then, they’ve seen each other out multiple times; each time, they have exchanged looks across the bar, as if to say “we shared a moment of deep personal intimacy, and now I want nothing to do with you.”

It’s also worth nothing that until shortly before this story begins, Chloe was in a relationship with a “fat science fiction fan,” and she says ever since then, the guys she’s slept with are getting hotter and hotter. She attributes this to a combination of confidence, alcohol, and the fact that “I am always willing.”

This from a friend, via text message: “Got to school an hour late due to having sex and it’s throwing my entire schedule off. Clothes that got me laid = bath towel.”

Update on Joe the Plumber: Remember the challenge I issued to him? He never responded to it, he ignored my sage advice to stop showing up everywhere in a sweatshirt and baggy jeans, and apparently, he is still stressed out.

The entries I write usually focus on the first time a couple hooks up. That’s based on a common assumption: The first time is the hardest to set up, requiring the most seduction, placing the highest demands on your charm and attractiveness. But that’s not always the case. Anyone can just blunder into a one-night stand. Sometimes the second time is the hardest. Having shared a night of passion, two people have lost their easy rapport, and are burdened by expectations and anxieties. An opportunity that once arose by pure chance must now be painstakingly and effortfully re-created. Each fears scaring the other away by acting clingy, or offending a pal by treating them as a mere booty call. One or more of the parties concerned may develop a paranoid fear that the other person is “ignoring” them, and sometimes they’re right. In fact, I recall that once I… but no, this isn’t the place. This story isn’t about me. It’s about a handsome man, a beautiful woman, and a cat in a dress.

“Magnolia” is a photographer who lives in a large city in Texas. “We like to say, ‘Everything is Bigger in Texas.'” She “know[s] this guy from the tattoo shop where I go, and he is super hot.” It’s the place where she gets tattoos, but also, “I go up to the shop and shoot the shit with all the guys that work there. They are very raunchy and sometimes I just need to hear some dirty talk!”

In fact, she met “Reno” about a year ago at a friend’s going away party; “I was drunk and hit on him all night. Then the next time I showed up at the shop, there he was, he just got hired! I pretended not to remember hitting on him, but he brought it to my attention.” She describes his look as “totally rock n’ roll, sleeved out, gauged ears, the kind of guy I would have taken home to Mom and Dad during my rebellious phase. He just looks like a bad ass! His vibe is super fun, someone that can party hard, and won’t let anyone fuck with him.”

“Long story, short, we hooked up once and it was great, and I thought this could be a regular booty call. We texted each other every now and then, but never could get our schedules to match so there was no booty to be had.” See? Logistics.

“Then, last weekend was my friend’s birthday party at a BYOB all-nude strip club. Classy, I know. Let’s start with what I was wearing… a purple/wine- colored silk spaghetti strap top with a sweetheart neckline. I save it for special occasions, and with the amount of boobies and crotches we were bound to see, I knew love (or lust) might be in the air. I was also wearing my favorite dark denim jeans and black high-heeled mary janes.”

Silk spaghetti-strap top

Forever 21 corset top

Marc Jacobs dark jeans

mary janes

Inside the club, “it was dark, smoky, sleazy, there were neon lights, a two-story stripper pole, strippers hanging off bars and flipping off ledges, it was nuts. I was impressed by the gymnastics of it, and we all thought we might see someone bust her head.” I once saw a stripper kick a bartender in the head with her lucite r platform shoe. He wasn’t upset; he seemed to accept it as a hazard of the trade. “The birthday girl had a lot of $ on her, so she was handing it out to us and dragging us up to strippers to stick it in their thongs… if they had thongs. I was just walking around and turned my head and a girl was hanging in the air from a pole, spread eagle, and I got an awful close up vagina view. I was not prepared for that (I’ve only been to the strip club twice before, and never an all-nude one).” Reno and Magnolia mostly weren’t interested in the strippers, so they chatted amicably. “He did smack my ass twice and I slapped his hand away because I didn’t want the other guys (from the tat shop) to see. They have really explicit conversations, and I didn’t want them to know about our ‘thing.'”

Finally, “it was really late (this club stayed open until 4 a.m.) and the guy was leaving. I wasn’t about to let this chance slip by, because, hey, I was wearing the silk ‘special occasion’ top. So I left too and texted him to come over.”

“He came over and was looking around at my artwork and my apartment because he had never been over before. Now, I will have to preface this with that fact that I had been drinking a lot all night, but I could have SWORN that I wasn’t drunk at this point. But I don’t know how a sober person could embarrass herself so much, so maybe we should tell everyone that I was wasted! He said something about my cat and I mentioned that I like to dress her up. Now my friends know this quirk about me and find it funny, or at least if they judge I don’t care. Then the guy asked to see my cat’s clothes. I got all excited (again…why???) and pulled out ALL of the outfits I had ever gotten her. It went like this: ‘Here is her party outfit and here is her springtime dress and here is her winter sweater….’ Oh sweet Jesus, it was bad.”

LOL @ this cat, for all eternity, unto the very crack of doom.

“Apparently, that didn’t dissuade him from getting some, so we got down to business. It was all great and fun until I accidentally elbowed him in the face and gave him a bloody nose! I had to stop and go get some Kleenex, which he shoved up his nose and left hanging out. Hot. His nose stopped bleeding but he said he could still taste blood in the back of his throat. Needless to say, we didn’t kiss after that, and I showed him to the door.”

Sometimes, the third hookup the toughest one of all: “I’m pretty sure I won’t hear from him again.” At least she can go hang out at the tattoo shop some more. But “the next time I go up there, if anyone asks about my cat, I’m turning around and walking out!”

The CTGML Facebook Group is up. To the 43% of people who voted in my survey that I shouldn’t start it because it’s a “stupid idea,” sorry. I hate Web 2.0, too, but I hate everything new. Like, if I had been around at the dawn of ink-and-paper writing, I would’ve been all like “God, this sucks! Why can’t we just keep using cuneiform?” Had I been alive in the waning days of the bronze age, I would have proclaimed iron to be “ridiculous.” Seriously, join my Facebook group. The most intelligent people on the internet read this blog, so we’ll have some great discussions there. Possible features the group will include:

— Post links to sexy clothes and hot sales you find online!

— Get fashion advice from lots of stylish ladies! (Straight dudes, this feature could be especially useful to you)

— Official CTGML discussion thread on pickup lines for women to use on men! (Straight dudes, you can help us out here)

Anyway. I encountered the following in Hannah Holmes’ bookThe Well-Dressed Ape: “While some researchers see copulation as the culmination of the negotiations, others suspect it may be just another way for animals to gauge one another’s quality…. Why [do people like to have sex all the time]? Is it a test of a partner’s quality? Some theorists think a roll in the hay might be a good way to gauge another human’s health and personality.” Sound familiar, ladies? Little did you know that all your casual sex was a brilliant Darwinian strategy.

But the tactic of hookup-as-relationship-test works even if your pairing is unlikely to produce offspring. Like the subjects of today’s story, “Heidi,” a musician, and “Gretchen,” a friend of the dudes in Heidi’s band. The two of them moved in the same social circles, and finally met one night last October, at a sleazy local dive bar (“The Buckaroo”). Gretchen is tall and skinny, “very androgynous,” and it seems Heidi was attracted right from the beginning. That night, it happened to be Gretchen’s birthday, and the whole gang ended up going to a different, moderately less dive-y bar to celebrate. “I bought her a shot of whiskey.” Along with Levi’s jeans and Chucks, Heidi was wearing an airbrushed Cher t-shirt that said “Gurlz rule.” Gretchen was a fellow appreciator of Cher, so this helped them build rapport.

Sonny & Cher

Another one

At the end of the evening, “we just crashed on a friend’s couch.” A dude who lived nearby offered up his couch and floors to the few who were still out partying. Hooking up came fairly naturally once they were in a room together. Heidi was lying on a blanket on the floor, and said “do you wanna lay down here?” They ended up fooling around. She says “it was great sexy times.”

Three or four days passed before they saw each other again. This time, it was Halloween. Heidi and her friends went out to a dance party being held in a warehouse. She was disguised as Ursula from the Little Mermaid, in full purple body paint, silver spray-painted hair, and tentacles constructed from pantyhose filled with packing peanuts.

Heidi is slimmer than this, though

She was wearing a black skirt with some sort of halter top, accessorized with a golden crown and trident, and red lipstick.

Gold crown

(I had, like, heck of problems finding the right kind of trident online. Free market, my ass. You’re on your own with this one.)

YSL red lipstick

As Heidi walked into the warehouse, the music hit a lull, “everyone in the room turned and stared at me, and it was like, ‘Yes!'” Among those at the party, “this particular girl turned and noticed me.” Gretchen was dressed as Ziggy Stardust. She was wearing tight jeans with a ball of yarn in the crotch, and had the lightning bolt painted on her face. They ended up dancing for a bit to “raunchy hip-hop” that the DJ was playing.

The party was “crazy.” Eventually they left, of course. Once again, they crashed at someone’s house, their friend “purple Siberian tiger” (for such was his costume). This is one of those cases where my notes are hard to read, but I think Purple Siberian Tiger slept on the sofa, letting them have the bed? It could be. Anecdotal evidence I’ve heard suggests that guys are only too eager to let lesbian couples hook up in their bed, if they get all horny at a party or something. It is one of the few compensations for the crushing burden of homophobia that queer people must bear in our regressive, reactionary society.

Anyway, having fooled around enough to verify each other’s quality, health and personality, they were ready to have sex. That’s what my notes appear to suggest, anyway. But I realized I wasn’t sure what that implies, since the distinction between “fooling around” and “going all the way” isn’t so clear in a lesbian context as it is with straight people. To gain insight into the “gay lifestyle,” I asked a bisexual woman. She says: “With a guy, my vocab distinctions would be: ‘I made out with him,’ or ‘ I hooked up with him’ (which would involve oral sex either way, or finger fucking), or ‘I had sex with him’ (which would be like, regular penis vagina sex). With a girl, my distinctions would be more like, ‘I made out with her” or ‘I had sex with her.’ The stuff that wouldn’t count as much as sex with guys would count as sex with girls. Some girls might say going down is a bigger deal than fingering and that that counts more as sex.” Also, it “probably” makes a difference whether they’re fully nude. So there you have it.

The two of them continued to date for “a short while,” and then Gretchen cut it off, saying “I’m not really looking to date anybody.” Heidi has seen her around town recently, they’re friendly and everything’s cool. When I asked her if the clothes had any effect, she said “absolutely,” and that there were “many references” made between them while they were dating to the Ursula and Ziggy costumes.